In children’s drawings, as in cartoons, it is eyelashes that distinguish the girls from the boys. Females have them, top and bottom, sprouting from the rims of the eyes in black rays; males make do with eyebrows, typically thick and dark. One way to upend the aesthetic paradigm is to overdo it. Women who wear false eyelashes tend to look simultaneously more and less alive, not animal nor automaton but something in between. Such is the transformative power of a feminine ideal taken to its logical conclusion. Pursue the longest lash, the deepest black, and you’ll surpass the convention to which you aspired.

In practice, dramatic lashes tend to fall into two categories. There is the big fake lash that looks big and fake — the Lichtenstein appendages of Nicki Minaj and Katy Perry, and the long black fans of drag icons. Then there is the echt supernatural: the enhancement that looks real but mysteriously bestowed, not merely enhanced but bizarre. Eyelashes on the spring and summer runways took the latter course, as prettiness tipped toward the spooky. There were anime-inspired falsies the shape and texture of sushi grass at Louis Vuitton and, at Thomas Tait, full disposable strip lashes worn upside down, the top bands dangling from the lower lids like stunned insects.

One thinks, of course, of Twiggy — only these lashes were less paint, more prop. Thanks to advances in medical-grade glue, what was once penciled trompe l’oeil is now possible in three dimensions with semi-permanent extensions, single fibers glued to each individual lash. For Marni, Tom Pecheux performed an even finer surgery by turning normal false lashes into tailored addenda, cutting long, well-curled strips into pieces and applying them in sparse, spindly bundles along the upper and lower lash lines. The effect blew the eyes wide open, making them appear round and glassy, like a doll’s. The lashes themselves looked paradoxically natural: The models wore no liner, no mascara, just feathery, unfilled brows and bespoke falsies. The overgrown lashes had the aura of something from the future, or possibly the past — an evolutionary mutation either long gone or still to come.

Meanwhile, at Marc Jacobs, François Nars used mascara as an instrument of excess, channeling ‘‘the East Village girl who’s been out all night’’ with an eerie hint of Man Ray’s ‘‘Tears.’’ To simulate the surprisingly appealing effect of piling today’s makeup on the crusted tar of yesterday’s, his crew applied at least six coats of mascara to each girl’s lashes, with dustings of powder between layers to thicken them and help them stick together. For the finishing touch, they pinched the lashes into spindles. No falsies, no curler: just lots and lots of mascara. When you think you’re done with mascara, says Nars, add more.